Baldur's Gate III

The Good
Baldur's Gate III takes a simple concept, the use of parasites to reproduce, and builds it out to a complex opera of desperate victims trying to overcome the plans of gods and demons. Each character the player meets has a rich story, more so enriched by developers who bend over backwards to improve each story. You can start by rolling your own player character, or play as each of the NPCs, experiencing their story, or as a special character, the dark urge, which adds another storyline to the main story. The player can carry on through the story with four characters and decide how to handle each encounter through the story. Each is infected by the Illithid, monsters capable of eating minds and controlling others. Only, the parasite is not progressing and instead those infected by the parasite become controlled, only not you nor the characters you encounter. This mystery will be unraveled throughout your journey. The combat is a pretty good implementation of Dungeons and Dragons 5e, though I'm no expert and there have been complaints about some of the rules. I found it complex and rich in details, with a lot of choices in how you build your character and create a viable team. The battles do not hand hold you and you have to take advantage of all the rules in order to survive some of the challenging fights in the game. The setting itself becomes key to victory, using chandeliers, oil spills, and barrels to damage and frustrate your enemies. The environments are rich and full of activities and quests to encounter. It seems as if each corner there is something new to discover, as you explore castles, druid enclaves, the depths of the Underdark, cursed lands, and finally the namesake city Baldur's Gate. Throughout there are plenty of interesting NPCs to meet and villains to challenges, as the conversations are usually entertaining, humorous, or touching. The side quests and the characters are the best part of the game. All are drenched in the world of dungeon's and dragons, as you meet many of the creatures of the world and discover the complex politics of the various races and monsters.

The Bad
As much as I loved playing the game, I could not give it a five star rating. There are bugs galore and UI complexities that will drive you crazy. For instance, in navigating the halls, if one wants to walk through a door, you cannot just click in the middle of the door, as it thinks you want to close the door. You have to turn the camera around and click on the other side of the door. Want to fire arrows from the top of what looks like an obvious balcony. Unfortunately, the view is blocked by the railing. Overall, there is a lot going right in the game, but modeling such a complex system is bound to have it's issues. A lot of time it's just trial and error to figure out how things really work in the game. For instance, the spell confusion should cause enemies to do random activities, but the spell does not work properly so most enemies just continue to attack your party, making it a waste of a spell. The team at Larian worked really hard to address these issues, but it's just to big and complex a game to get all the issues addressed, so many times you will get frustrated clicking on your characters in a crowd, or directing actions.

The Bottom Line
The game is an amazing work of fiction merged with gameplay. All the characters are interesting and the amount of choice in the game that has consequence is beguiling and begs for multiple play throughs. Well worth a play through, despite the bugs and complexity.

The Good
The graphics are great.

The Bad
I found the first 30 hours to be somewhat interesting, but after that, starting with Act 2, I suddenly started to become very bored and over the game. The environments are depressing and boring. The combat starts to get repetitive and is very slow and boring. The story and characters are uninspiring and boring. Traversal is awkward and very point-and-click oriented. None of the music is interesting.

The Bottom Line
I just couldn't bring myself to keep playing and lost interest. At least I gave it a real chance.

The Good
A few of the scenes like Act 2 look nice

The Bad
- The 3D camera is awful. - Turn-based combat takes way too long compared to BG1/2 RTWP. - Characters and monsters many actions and move too far per turn. - It has 4 party members instead of 6 like in BG1/2. - The UI is very ugly compared to BG1/2. - The 3D character faces/portraits are very ugly compared to the drawn portraits in BG1/2. - It includes childish reddit humor like the poop knife. - It's been in early access for years, but it's still very buggy. - It's too sexual to the point of being disgusting in my opinion - The animations are comically bad. - The PC is not voiced so they just mime in the animated dialogues. - The companions are extremely unlikeable. - The environmental graphics tend to be confusing (though not as much as JA3) - The narrator is a bizarre feature

I could go on...

The Bottom Line
The story of BG ended definitively in BG2 ToB.

This is a different game that they cynically put the BG name on. I think that without the name this would be recognized as a bad or mediocre game.

Sometimes our memories deceive us, so after finding "BG3" so disappointing I went and played BG2 SoA. Yep, it's just as good as I remember it being and much better than "BG3".